Worldwide CRM market grew 12.5% last year

Stamford, Conn.—The need to retain customers combined with the increasing availability of on-demand applications helped drive customer relationship management expenditures to $9.15 billion in 2008, up 12.5% from the previous year, according to a new report by Gartner Inc.

Web-based (software as a service) CRM solutions accounted for nearly 20% of total CRM software market spending last year, up from just over 15% in 2007, according to Gartner's report, "Dataquest Insight: CRM Software Market Share Analysis, Worldwide 2008."

Also spurring adoption of CRM applications is the growing importance of tracking consumer participation in online forums and social sites, Gartner said.

Market leader SAP accounted for 22.5% of worldwide CRM software sales, down from 25.5% in 2007. Microsoft's Dynamics CRM product experienced the strongest growth rate among top vendors, boosting sales by 75% last year.

Original posted by Christopher Hosford from btobonline

CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 6

Latest CRM 4.0 rollup released on 27/8/2009.

Rollup 6 can be uninstall.

Rollup 6 is cumulative.

The Update Rollup 6 client can be deployed before the server is upgraded to Update Rollup 6

Rollup 1,2,3,4,5 are not prerequisites.

KB: 970148

Download HERE

CRM 4: Right align number fields in CRM views

My friend ask is it possible to right align those CRM integer,float and money field to right, because user complaint it is hard to read it correctly in the CRM view, especially for money fields with different value. Well the answer is YES and the solution is very easy (after doing some Google+research, credit goes to Sam Jones)

Ideal is very straight foward, modify the CRM CSS file to make it right align for number field.

1. From the _grid folder or search from wwwroot for "AppGrid.css.aspx"
2. Find the class started with nobr.num
3. Add an element in it: text-align : right;
4. Refresh your CRM page.

FYI: CRM fields such as money,integer and float type all render as nobr.num, so change one place will do.

happy CRM'ing

CRM 4 - Small changes:big effect

1) Multi-Columns sorting

All CRM view actually support multi-columns sorting, the key point is user must press [shift] and click the second column, seems not much users notice this usefull feature.

2) Manipulate CRM Privileges

If you found that your entity privileges in security role page just consist of "None Selected" (empty red circle) or "Organization" (filled green circle). Please double check your entity information ownership is it set correctly.

-for organization owned entities - only Organization and none security levels allowed
-for user owned entities - none, user, business unit, parent child business unit and organization level allowed.

Sql query for better understanding...

SELECT OwnershipTypeMask as mask,*
FROM MetadataSchema.Entity
WHERE OwnershipTypeMask=8
ORDER BY OwnershipTypeMask

CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 5

RollUp 5 for MSCRM 4.0, this time including the rollup for SRS data connector, as usual it was packed into 64/32 bits version. You can get it from the link below Download Here

Rollup 5 can be uninstall.
Again, backup your unsupported customization before install the rollup.
For export/import customization from different version:

• Rollup 5 is compatible with rollup 2,3,4
• Not compatible with rollup 1 or original version without rollup.

Detail on rollup 5 can found in this KB970141